Hicks

Scrape

There’s a road near home that I cycle most weeks. Its a gravelly and potholed concrete track with a descent and then a small climb. It acts as a shortcut to the village of Hailey, avoiding the busy main road where I’ve felt the breeze from wing mirrors of passing cars.

Normally, I take this track quite gingerly – staying on the left side where there are less potholes and not taking it too fast. Last Sunday however, I seemed to have decided that I’d been needlessly overcautious in the past, and didn’t need to brake going down the hill. It’s obvious what happened next isn’t it? I could feel the bike slide beneath me and down I came, sliding down the hill on the gravel to the bottom of the dip.

All that’s left of the ‘Giro’ is the O

Fortunately nothing was broken, just bumped and scraped – the helmet did it’s job! The inner foam was cracked through in four places, and on the side I slid on, its almost scraped all the outer shell off. Also, my cycling buddy Andy was with me, so I knew that there was someone who could ring for help. As it was, I recovered enough to slowly limp home the last four miles, but it was agony.

My bike came out of it much better than I did, just cosmetic scrapes, nothing expensive to fix. All in all, I came out of it well, and I know people who’ve had far worse knocks, and not their fault either. I feel a bit of an arse, and I’m in quite a bit of pain, but my enthusiasm for cycling isn’t dwindled one bit.